Where do you want to go? Just put the postcode in the SatNav and it leads you there. For a moment, imagine an emotional SatNav – a digital way to program in a desired state of mind, and the machine leads you to it. We already have psychotherapy and NLP etc. – these are organic.
“Terminator” suggests artificial intelligence leads to a world where machine mind rules humans. That’s an over-simplification. Our ongoing abdication of thought process (and therefore responsibility) – even how to get around – drives the rise of “machine mind”.
In search of repeatable results, and for speed and efficiency, we are measured (and measure ourselves) on results. We forget – or don’t know – that living the journey is the point of being here, right now. When we take that final breath, there’s no doubt that the overall outcome is important. But for some people it might be the first time they’re truly connected to the moment since birth.
How machines would lead us to desired thoughts that would be significant. Animators give a few frames and a computer fills in, making incremental changes linking frames. If emotional software could generate discrete end-point feelings, then these could be modulated to provide a seemingly continuous emotional experience – much as digital music approximates actual sound in a way that appears smooth to humans.
Of course this is conjecture – medical research right now focuses on providing sight and hearing to those who can be helped with current technology.
But if you play advanced computer games – or if you have teenage kids and spend time watching what they do – you’ll know we already have action films that people interact with and are part of.
As this technology evolves – and if medicine or gaming ever generates an interface that connects directly to our emotions – then replay of step-wise, digitized, emotional increments will inject a continuous experience, the “ultimate TV”, without any effort on out part.
Yoga has offered practices to achieve the “witness consciousness”, watching our own lives in third person, for thousands of years. Much more than this, a Yoga practice encourages us to define our own goals and builds insight to locate resources. It starts with what we want to achieve physically, but we soon realise that any physical change reflects internal growth.
